Public health benefit of over-the-counter nicotine medications.

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the impact of allowing non-prescription sales of nicotine medications in the United States on increasing the numbers of smokers quitting. DESIGN: Sales and marketing data were used to compare the use of nicotine medications before and after non-prescription sales, and to estimate the impact of non-prescription sales on quit rates. SETTING: United States. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Number of quit attempts using nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products, number of smokers who quit smoking with over-the-counter (OTC) NRT or with NRT still sold by prescription, and incremental quits attributable to OTC NRT. RESULTS: Since the US Food and Drug Administration approved nicotine medications for OTC sale in 1996, use of the medications has increased by 152% compared with prior prescription use. With increased use of an efficacious treatment, OTC nicotine medications are estimated to yield from 114,000-304,000 new former smokers annually in the United States. CONCLUSIONS: The broader availability and promotion of effective treatments for tobacco dependence, specifically nicotine gum and patch, increase the number of smokers availing themselves of the medications. This increased use is estimated to contribute substantially to the number of former smokers in the United States.

Review and needs assessment of materials designed to prevent tobacco use.

Over the past 25 years, numerous educational materials and strategies have been developed for the prevention and control of tobacco use. However, there has been no comprehensive assessment of the available materials designed to educate the public to avoid the use of tobacco. A search for materials and a review process was conducted in the fall of 1993, and a panel of experts reviewed the materials that were collected. In conducting the search, 240 persons and organizations associated with tobacco control efforts across the United States were contacted, and 207 materials were identified and evaluated. All materials were assessed by at least two members of the expert panel. Of the 207 items, 188 were found to be acceptable according to standardized review criteria. The authors drew conclusions about the current availability of tobacco use prevention materials and present recommendations for increasing the availability of materials to community-level and other control programs.

Adolescent smoking: research and health policy.

A great deal is now known about the prevalence and natural history of adolescent smoking. The literature on smoking intervention, drawn from theoretically based experiments, shows that most programs are unlikely to become widely disseminated because of the extensive resources required. More thoughtful strategies for research and targeting of interventions are examined. They may yield coordinated and comprehensive approaches to moving more quickly and effectively from the behavioral laboratory into the field.